“By us, for us”: self-governed humanitarian initiatives by Sudanese refugees in Jordan
This research aims to understand how refugees subvert the categories of ‘recipient’ and ‘donor’. The aim is to explore the multiple possibilities for autonomy in the constrained context of forced migration.
Humanitarian and social context and issues
This research project focuses on the role of Sudanese refugees in the humanitarian ecosystem in Amman, Jordan, and their self-managed initiatives in the context of humanitarian transition and aid localisation. While the literature on aid localisation has shown how international institutions negotiate and adapt to local norms, few studies have looked at refugees as ‘local’ actors and aid providers. This is even more the case in the context of South-South mobility, which expands and complicates the concept of ‘local’. To this end, this study focuses on humanitarian initiatives set up and managed by Sudanese refugees in Amman. These initiatives mainly address refugees’ needs for legal protection and education.
The aim of this research is to identify the humanitarian initiatives run by refugees, regardless of their nationality, and to develop a typology of them. On the one hand, the aim is to identify the humanitarian initiatives run by refugees, regardless of their nationality, and to draw up a typology of them, in order to understand how they develop in different ways within the humanitarian ecosystem in Jordan, and to highlight their relationships, both dependent and interdependent, with other actors and the synergies at work. On the other hand, by taking a micro approach and observing participation in these initiatives, the impact of ethnic and social affiliations on the perceptions of aid providers and beneficiaries will be identified. Although these initiatives are mainly for refugees, they also include other ethnic and social groups, such as Jordanians and Westerners. The aim is to understand how the categories of volunteer, donor, expatriate, refugee and the socio-ethnic attributions involved are interwoven in an intersectional way.
How do refugee-led initiatives in exile fit into the ecosystem of humanitarian governance in Jordan ? How do they relate to the actors that make up the “fog of the refugee system” (Baujard, 2008)? How much autonomy do they express in a context of multiple constraints ?
Description of the research area and research method
Based on action research, this research project combines semi-structured interviews with observational and ethnographic participation. On the one hand, the semi-structured interviews with the refugees allowed us to explore their perceptions of the humanitarian aid system. It is also important not to confine them to their role as ‘beneficiaries’, but to see them as autonomous actors who provide aid. For this reason, the interviews pay particular attention to the multiple meanings that refugees attach to their participation. In addition, this research shows how refugee initiatives bring together different ethnic and social groups. Interviews will also be conducted with Jordanian and Western volunteers to understand the meanings they attach to their humanitarian engagement, particularly with refugee-led initiatives.
The scientific interest of the research and for humanitarian and social actors
This research aims to identify possible links between institutional humanitarian actors and refugee-run initiatives in the fields of education and legal protection. It seeks to identify possible sources of funding and ways to formalise refugee-led initiatives. The research will also contribute to raising the profile of refugee communities and associations among local and international humanitarian and social actors.
This research is part of the anthropology of migration and contributes to the understanding of South-South migration in the context of the externalisation of asylum and the borders of ‘fortress Europe’. It also contributes to work on the agentivity of refugees and their multiple modes of engagement and mobilisation in everyday life. As such, it offers an anthropology and ethnography of aid from below, based on refugee-led initiatives. In doing so, it contributes to a field of study that has been under-explored in studies of migration in the Middle East.
Biography
Solenn Al Majali is an anthropologist specialising in forced migration in Jordan. She wrote her dissertation at the TELEMMe laboratory of the University of Aix-Marseille on inter-ethnic relations and urban sociability in a multicultural district of the Jordanian capital Amman. Her research focused on the racialisation of refugees of African origin in Jordan, particularly those from the Horn of Africa (Sudan, Somalia and Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula). At the same time, she is doing an internship at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies (a Yemeni think-tank) to understand the social and migration issues of climate change in the context of the conflict in Yemen.